Israellycool

Unlike yesterday, there have already been a number of Qassams that have landed in Israel. So far, there have been no reports of injuries or damage, although it is being reported that another victim has succumbed to wounds he received last week, making him the 11th victim of Qassam rocket fire, and the 3rd in this current period of intensified attacks that commenced over 2 weeks ago. The victim, 13-year-old Chai Shalom, was a deaf mute, who was confined to a wheelchair, and who sustained his injuries after a Qassam landed next to a bus transporting him and 3 other disabled children.

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren is being lined up to star in a film set in the Gaza Strip, as a woman whose journalist daughter falls in love with a Palestinian and is killed, the company making the film said Thursday.

 

The film, described by Left Bank Picture head Andy Harries as more human interest than political, is expected to be shot in Jordan because the fighting between rival factions in Gaza.

There is considerable irony in the fact that now of all times, while Qassam rockets are raining down on Sderot schools and on Sapir College, not only does Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) not find it appropriate to express its support for Israeli students forced to endure incessant life-threatening attacks ‚Äì but it has also chosen this particular time to announce its call for a boycott of Israel’s academic institutions.

Former slacker turned Islamic wacker, Adam Gadahn, has appeared in an internet video, warning of worse attacks on his birthplace the US.

The United States will face worse attacks than those on September 11, 2001 if it does not heed al Qaeda demands effectively allowing the group control over Muslim countries, a U.S. Islamist militant said on Tuesday.

Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam and the first American to be charged with treason since the World War Two era, appeared in a video posted on the Internet. Gadahn, wearing robes and a turban, is believed to be in Pakistan.

“Your failure to meet our demands … means that you and your people will, Allah willing, experience things which will make you forget about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech,” said the bearded Gadahn, addressing his comments to President George W. Bush.

Gadahn was referring to the Virginia Tech campus shooting rampage last month in which student gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and himself.

“This is not a call for negotiations. We do not negotiate with baby killers and war criminals like you,” said Gadahn.

“You will go down in history not only as the president who embroiled his nation in a series of unwinnable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world but as the president who set the United States up on its death march.”

Listing al Qaeda’s demands, Gadahn said: “Pull every last one of your soldiers… out of every Muslim land. If so much as one single U.S. soldier or spy remain on Islamic soil it shall be considered sufficient justification for us to continue our defensive jihad against your nation and people.”

Gadahn demanded the United States end all support “moral, military, economic or otherwise to the bastard state of Israel and ban your citizens … from traveling to occupied Palestine or settling there”.

The demands also included releasing all Muslim prisoners and stopping support to the “apostate” governments of Muslim states.

He said a U.S. pullout from Iraq alone would not do.

“Things are not going too well for your crusader coalition,” Gadahn said of U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We will continue to strike hard this year, next year, the year after that and so on until the last crusader goes home, whether waving a white flag or lying in a flag-covered casket.”

Last year, an indictment delivered by a grand jury in a federal court in California accused Gadahn of making a series of al Qaeda propaganda videos. The treason charge against him carries a maximum punishment of death.

The FBI has been seeking to question Gadahn since May 2004, and the U.S. government has offered up to $1 million in reward money for information leading to his arrest.

Gadahn converted to Islam from a Jewish-Christian family when he was 17 and a few years later moved to Pakistan. He was previously known as Adam Pearlman and grew up on a goat ranch outside Los Angeles.

Here’s the video:

I’m also wondering whether there is any connection between his childhood on a goat ranch, and his becoming an Islamic terrorist.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres announced his candidacy Wednesday for president of Israel, an office tarnished by rape and other sexual misconduct allegations against its current occupant, Moshe Katsav.

Unlike previous statements made by the council, calling on both Israel and the Palestinians to cease fire, Wednesday’s statement did not call for a bilateral ceasefire, but rather for curbing of clashes in Gaza and the firing of rockets at Israel.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday blamed Palestinian extremism for being primarily responsible for the suffering of Gaza Strip residents.

 

“Gaza residents are the victims of extremism and leaders who are willing to shed their blood and deprive them of the right to live in peace and security,” said Olmert, during a Knesset event honoring the local authorities.

Israel today arrested a longtime wanted terror leader here in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

 

According to Israeli security officials and Palestinian sources in Ramallah speaking to WND, the terrorist was arrested while having car sex just a few hundred feet from late PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s gravesite.

 

Khaled Shawish, an officer in Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Force 17 presidential guards, was captured by undercover Israeli police forces following scores of shooting attacks he is suspected of carrying out. Shawish, who doubles as the Ramallah chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, previously boasted of involvement in a West Bank shooting attack in December 2000 that killed Israeli ultranationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane’s wife, Talya.

 

The Brigades is the declared “military wing” of Abbas’ Fatah party.

After the Kahane murder, Shawish was extended refuge by Arafat to live in the late PLO leader’s Ramallah compound, widely known as the Muqata. Arafat is buried at the entrance to the Muqata.

 

Shawish continued the past seven years to live in the Muqata, from which, according to Israeli security officials, he directed the Brigades to carry out scores of shootings against Israelis driving on West Bank roads.

 

Several years ago Shawish sustained an injury during a gun battle with the Israel Defense Forces and has since been confined to a wheelchair, although he is still able to drive.

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat’s grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

A joint group of the National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed of Fatah, claimed responsibility on Tuesday for launching two homemade projectiles at the Sufa crossing, located east of Rafah between the southern Gaza Strip and Israel.

In terms of this Republican administration, some views about stem cell

research, gay rights, separation of church and state, and on and on—I

don’t agree with any of them. But you can worry about the trees and the

environment and gas emissions later. Right now there’s a bigger

problem, and it’s a guy who doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a

Democrat; he wants to blow himself up and take you out. That’s the

problem. I think racially profiling anybody from the Middle East …

the Swiss have been good this year, and as an Israeli, I want you to

look at me first. I want you to search my anal cavity and look at my

tax records. I want you to look at me first, and then at every guy

named Muhammad.

- KISS front man Gene Simmons

For the past 2 weeks, I have been liveblogging the events here in Israel, to my knowledge the only English-speaking Israeli blogger to do so consistently. Given the escalation in the situation, I figured that readers would be interested in more regular posting on events “almost” as they happen, much like during the Second Lebanon War last Summer.

However, I have reached the point where I am not sure if I should continue. Given my relative lack of time, I will only continue if I perceive a real need or want for this liveblogging. The issue is the usual one - lack of feedback. My traffic has remained more or less constant, and I have received hardly any comments, leading me to conclude that this liveblogging is not really wanted or needed.

I therefore ask you dear readers - should I continue liveblogging the current events in Israel?

Please leave your feedback in the comments. A lack of feedback to this question will be construed as a no!

Update: The liveblogging will continue until I come to a decision based on the feedback. So you can still scroll down for the latest news.

I interrupt my liveblogging to report that Suha Arafat has been assassinated by a Zionist agent.